Chapter 8
It’s been a month, and I was ready to wave the white flag.
Seriously.
Skylar had more than proven that not all women got emotionally invested when it came to sex. Our nights were filled with the wildest sex that I’d had ever had, but our days were filled with her treating me like she’d always had.
It wasn’t only the way that she treated me at work, either. I was really starting to feel like a little bitch because, on the few nights when she had passed on meeting up, I had felt let down and pissed off all at the same time. However, because of those stupid rules that I had agreed to, I hadn’t even been able to ask her why she couldn’t meet me.
Now, in my defense, the woman fucked like a trained porn star, so I was at my weakest when she was around.
I could admit that.
A month into this arrangement, I was all out of new ideas to please her. If there was a sex act that involved only two people, then we’d done it. Skylar didn’t know how to say no in the bedroom, and I was hooked like a strung-out junkie.
The addiction had really hit me hard when we had decided to do away with the condoms. We had both gone and had gotten physicals-which people should do for just regular health reason-and when the results had come back all good, the first thing that I’d done was cum in her pussy. After that, I’d been out of control, determined to mark her everywhere. The woman’s been covered from head to toe with my loads, and both those tight holes of her had been cream-pied.
That day in the storage room had also been the one and only time that we had crossed the line at work…well, except for that one other time in the women’s restroom. Though we hadn’t gotten caught, and no one had suspected, it was one thing for me not to care about getting fired, but costing Skylar her job would tear me apart. I had the luxury of always being able to work for my father if I ever lost my job. I had no idea what Skylar’s options would be. We still didn’t talk about personal shit when we were together.
It was all sex.
“You are a lifesaver.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
I turned my head at Skylar’s voice, and I saw that she was talking with Cory Orr. He was one of Edison’s crew members, and the guy was one of Edison’s best. The guy had lived over an auto shop that had specialized in trucking, and the owner had taken a liking to Cory. So, at the tender age of six, the guy had started teaching Cory everything that he knew, and it’d been a lot. Cory was a genius, and he was one of the highest paid mechanics that we had.
“I promise that it’ll be the best night of your life,” Cory told her, and that got my back up.
“If I had a dollar for every time a guy has told me that…” Skylar murmured.
“You’d have millions?” Cory chuckled.
“Five dollars, actually,” she chuckled back. “I usually shut them down before they get that far.”
“What’s going on?” I asked as I exited my office. With our office doors always opened, their conversation had been easy to overhear.
Cory looked over at me. “My mother is forcing me to go to some church barbecue this Saturday, and Skylar is being kind enough to go as my date.”
My stomach flipped.
“What?”
“Yeah,” Cory cringed. “My mother is on this crusade to get me married off to some nice girl, and she’s being relentless about it. This stupid barbecue is her way of throwing me to the sharks.” He smiled over at Skylar. “I convinced Sky to go with me as my date, so that my mom backs off.”
“Why go at all?” I asked, doing my best not to reach out, grab Skylar by her neck, then drag her against me, yelling that she’s mine like a goddamn caveman.
“My cousin, Janet, helped put it on, so all the family is going,” Cory explained. “I’ll look like a dick if I don’t go. Plus, I like Janet. I actually wouldn’t mind going if it weren’t for my mother and her matchmaking ways.”
“So…Skylar’s going to pretend to be your girlfriend all day long?” I asked, and I could feel my blood begin to boil. I didn’t care if this was an innocent outing or not.
“No,” Cory answered.
“Okay, now I’m confused,” I said because I was.
“She’s going as my date,” he said, and I just stared at him.
“If I go with him as his girlfriend, his mother will automatically assume that it’s serious and start talking weddings,” Skylar said, finally chiming in. “We’re going in the guise of a first date, so that she doesn’t label me as her newest daughter-in-law.”
Cory grinned. “Plus, if my mother does start acting pushy, I can tell her that she’s the reason that Skylar broke up with me later.”
“Or you could simply tell your mother that you’re a grown ass man, and that you don’t need her meddling in your love life,” I suggested.
“Yeah, right,” he snorted. “I’ll get right on that.”
“You’re really asking a son to go up against his mother?” Skylar asked, and I knew that she was doing it just to be contrary. “What’d Cory ever do to you?”
“Seriously,” Cory muttered.
I straightened to my full height, then crossed my arms over my chest. “I just think that it might send the wrong message,” I told them. “If you go out with Cory-pretend girlfriend or otherwise-then the other guys might think that it’s okay to start asking you out.”
“They already ask her out.” Cory looked over at Skylar. “Don’t they?”
“I’m not talking about playful flirting,” I clarified. “I’m talking about serious interest.”
Cory cocked his head at me. “Dude, where in the hell have you been? A few guys have already asked her out seriously. She turned them all down, but they were still interested. Hell, they probably still are.”
My eyes shot Skylar’s way. “I think we need to talk.”
“Sure, Boss,” she drawled out sarcastically, but I didn’t care.
*****
Skylar~
It sucked to discover when you were wrong, and I was wrong.
Again.
The past month had been pretty perfect by my accounts. After Landen had fingered me in the storage building, things had gotten back to normal, and I’d been under the impression that things had been going well with our arrangement.
Apparently, not.
When Cory had asked me to stand in as his date at the church barbecue, I had immediately turned him down, and I’d done it for the same reason that Landen had stated earlier. I liked working here, and I liked the friendly banter that flowed around the place. Me dating someone here could easily disrupt the vibe in the department, and I’d never want that. That’s the reason that it’d been so easy to turn down the requests for dates, and it was the same reason that the guys had taken my rejection in stride. No one was ignorant of what dating me could mean in this place, even though a few of them had given it a shot anyway. Even though I had also entertained the idea with Landen.
Still, when Cory had explained that it was more than just getting his mom off his back, I had listened. When he’d been done explaining, I had changed my answer. While I thought that it was unfortunate that he felt like he still needed to hide his sexual orientation in this day and age, I understood it. Families were a tricky thing, and if Cory wasn’t ready to come out to his family, who was I to force the issue with advice about a topic that I knew nothing about. I had no idea what it was like to feel as if I couldn’t love freely, so instead of acting like I knew what I was talking about, I had agreed to go with him. What I hadn’t expected was for Landen to get stupid again.
“What this time?” I sighed as Landen shut his office door behind him. Now, while this wasn’t the first time that I’d been behind closed doors with one of the supervisors, it didn’t happen often.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he hissed. “You’re seriously going to go out on a date with Cory?”
“Stop being stupid,” I chided. “We just explained to you what was going on, Landen.”
“So, what? You’re just going to start passing out personal favors to the mechanics when they ask you?” he asked, still hissing.
“Well, since I’m not a gullible fool that follows people blindly, or the type of person that caves to peer pressure, that’d be a no, Landen.”
I watched him run his hand through his hair, and it really sucked that he was so damn hot when he was riled up. There was just something about a man that was in his feels, no matter what society claimed about male aggression. Still, now was not the time to be getting turned on.
“I don’t like it,” he finally said, and I could feel something shifting between us.
“Well, that’s too bad,” I told him, ignoring the warning apprehension swirling in my gut. “Cory is a good guy, and I see no problem with helping him out.”
Landen’s head jerked back a bit, and he looked rather pissed off if you asked me. “You’re fucking me, but you don’t see a problem with walking around at a church function, holding hands with Cory, cuddling up to Cory, letting everyone believe that you’re a couple?”
Though it was beginning to sound a lot like the fat lady was singing, and I was winning our little battle of the sexes when it came to friends-with-benefits, I was too offended to bask in my almost-win. “Well, since no one knows that I’m fucking you, I don’t see how that matters,” I fired back. “Plus, Cory has no problem with us telling people at work the truth about why I’m going with him to this thing.” I cocked my head, then put my hands on my hips. “What is your problem?”
“So, then you’re okay with me masquerading as some other woman’s boyfriend?” he asked, his voice almost sounding like a growl.
It was hard to admit, but the next words out of my mouth were both the truth and a lie. “You’re not my boyfriend, Landen,” I reminded him. “We are not dating. We are fucking. We are friends-with-benefits. We have an arrangement, but if you want to be with other people, then I’m okay with that. Those were the rules, right? All we had to do was let each other know ahead of time, correct? In fact, your only stipulation was that I didn’t date anyone on your crew. Well, Cory isn’t on your crew.”
“Don’t throw those fucking rules at me, Skylar,” he snapped.
“Then what is this?” I asked, doing my best to keep my voice down. “You’re acting ridiculous.”
It didn’t make any sense that Landen would be jealous, but that’s how he was acting. Still, after a month of meeting up almost every night, he still only called me baby in bed, and we still hadn’t woken up together in the morning. We’d been sticking to the rules, so I wasn’t sure what this was.
“We agreed that we’d be monogamous while we were doing this,” he pointed out. “You going out on a date with Cory doesn’t sound monogamous to me.”
“I’m not going out on a date with him,” I almost shouted. “I’m only going with him to keep his mother off his back. I’m hardly going to follow him back to his place afterwards and start riding his dick.”
Landen’s entire body locked up, and the look that he shot me would have had a lesser woman running away. He looked pissed, but I still didn’t understand why. If he was jealous, then he should be man enough to say so, then we could talk about what it means. Instead, he was acting like an asshole.
Then, in a voice that sent dark shivers down my spine, he said, “Says you.”
That got my back up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Who’s to say that you don’t have such a great time that you don’t end up following him back home?”
If I were the type of person to think of only myself first, I would tell him that Cory was gay. Telling him that Cory was gay would kill this entire conversation. However, I wasn’t that type of person. I was not about to announce to the world that Cory was gay. He had confided in me, and that’s where it was going to end. I was not about to share the man’s story, even if it would benefit my situation with Landen.
“Then I’ll be sure to send you a text before I get to his house, informing you that I’ve moved on, and it’s with someone that’s not on your crew,” I replied coldly.
Just then, a knock on the door interrupted my impending murder. Landen looked like he wanted to kill me with his bare hands, and it was clear that this thing between us was over.
I turned around and opened the door, and it was to see Franklin standing on the other side. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Donning my best smile, I said, “Not a problem. We were done discussing the new grid charts anyway.”
Franklin smiled back, his shoulders softening with relief. “Oh, okay. Good.”
I looked back at Landen, and he still looked pissed. “Since we’re done here, I’ll let you get to it,” I said, and those grey eyes of his narrowed at my double meaning.
Before Landen could say anything more, I was walking out of his office, making my way back towards mine. Now, while I wanted to shut the door and just hide for a moment, my pride wouldn’t let me.
Sheer spitefulness had my office door wide the hell open.